A History of Silence - Lloyd Jones is following his bloodline.

Lloyd Jones is following his bloodline. What gets left behind? What gets hidden? In this review I refer to the author by his first name, Lloyd. As I somehow feel I have come to know him. Why does Lloyd make this journey into his past history at this time in his life? The other side of fifty, more questions about mortality, purpose, searching for answers that remained out of sight. Beginning to wonder, having your own children. Remembrances. Lloyd delves into why we retain the things we do. In the process revealing himself to be an exceptionally gifted and reflective writer. p.245. ‘ I looked into the hairdressers window once and saw her, wide eyed beneath a dryer, like someone receiving electric shock treatment. My father used to say I’d send my mother to (an early grave) to the loony bin if I carried on the way I did. I can’t remember what I did to cause offence. This recollection has no role to play. But, it continues to exist, like a card fallen out of a pack, representative of other such moments that fail to add up to anything more. In this way life sheds itself. It leaves skin on the furniture, hair on a pillow. A life reduces to a couple of walk on parts in other people’s recollections. And while some fade, others remain stuck forever like an overbearing portrait glowering down from the walls.’ This is one of the standout examples of Lloyd’s take on memory, those remembered moments that stick like glue. Whether we want them there or not. The silence, the hidden pasts of families, Lloyd equates with stage fright, echoes of fear and shame. There are many, many stories of hidden pasts. The dead end of a generation. Lost without any artefacts to trace. Lloyd is able to trace his threads from the past. The artefacts, letters, transcripts, voices left to be heard. Overlayed with the trauma of loss of the scale of disaster that struck Christchurch in 2011. Is this why the author feels the need to walk the streets and stand where his ancestors stood? Any ancestors. As he curiously goes to a place named Zula with a fabricated family history from his wife’s ancestry. Finding the missing pieces of the past helps to discover why things happened the way they did, why people are the way they are. But one hundred years on there is a lot of the benefit of hindsight. Dying Lloyd recalls one of the last looks of hope and trust by his dying dog and mother. The sense of helplessness at having to let them go. The knowing what was to happen seen as a massive betrayal. For each person dying it is like we haven’t done this before. Like we need to know the rules, but it appears we don’t. So people blunder on. Lloyd earlier relates the story of the doctor asking if his mother knows she is dying. The tip toeing around the central truth of dying. Eventually Lloyd tells his mother ‘You’re on your last legs’. She relates that she has been let down. The conclusion being ‘Dying feels like we have let down our loved ones.’ As if there is more that could have been done, somehow for human or animal. It could also be her mother surmising that in life she had been let down, the abandonment by her mother. Despite the implied emotion of family secrets Lloyd is not a sentimentalist. He describes his search for reasons behind his known world. Childhood, family home, pets, relatives. The shared habits of a lifetime, without undue fuss. Much like his parents’ generation, the worse sin is to make a scene or cause a fuss. There are tiny fragments of his own life in the ‘now’, apart from the retracing of steps and revisiting the past. We learn he was asked to write about the Christchurch earthquake not long after it happened, but doesn’t get back to them. But perhaps a genesis for this book appears. Other fragments occur with a mention once or twice about his own children, wife and a separation. But these are submerged by the wider purpose of the memoir. Which is looking back. To look inside himself. To get the answers the author has been denied. But as often happens, his parents have left the scene by the time this search really begins. They will not hear the resolutions. Memories are such fragile things. I was stirred to write of my own search through family shame, sadness, brokenness and silence. There is a wider framework here, as many families have a silence. Unexplained ancestors, lost in time. Or lost to follow up as reports might say. The energy to do the follow up is huge. So well done to Lloyd Jones for having the fortitude and courage to go through the midst of time. This was a book that was always at the top of its game and I relished it all.